


When You Have To Go There

by Thea_Bromine



Series: Kaleidoscope [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thea_Bromine/pseuds/Thea_Bromine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of ‘Bewitched...’, Giles and Xander get each other into focus.</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/125573331@N03/16506662929"></a><br/>  <img/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Accessible Adult

A police station, thought Giles, was a police station the world over: lit to excess, echoing, and provided with remarkably uncomfortable chairs. The room into which he was ushered, and in which Xander sat hunched in a corner, was indistinguishable from the one from which he had been sprung by Philip however many years before after a pub crawl turned violent when the football supporters met the local constabulary.

“Xander?”

Xander didn’t even look up. “I’m really sorry, Mr Giles.”

The ‘mister’ made Giles blink in mild surprise, but he supposed it to be for the benefit of the police officer. “Yes, well, I’m not very clear on precisely what has happened?”

“Mr Giles?” That was the police officer; Giles thought vaguely that he had no idea how American police ranks worked, or what was an appropriate form of address; he waited for a hint. “I’m Sergeant Bishop. There was some sort of disturbance at the mall, a fight between gangs, we think; Xander isn’t in any trouble, but we couldn’t raise anybody at his home and he gave your name as somebody who would take responsibility for him.”

“Oh, certainly. You, you’ll want to see some ID, I expect.”

“Please, sir, yes. Are you a relative?”

“No. I work at Xander's school. My, my work permit – I’m a British national – and that’s my access card for the school. I’m the librarian.”

The sergeant inspected both. “Not a teacher?”

“No.”

“So – excuse me, Mr Giles but I don't quite see the connection. Why would the school librarian be taking responsibility for a pupil out of hours?”

“I’m, I’m mentoring a small group of students; I imagine that’s why he will have asked for me.”

The sergeant frowned. “The librarian mentoring students? Is that usual?”

_Just let it bloody go, will you?_ “It’s part of a social education programme.” A glance told him that Xander was listening while pretending not to; good. He could flannel the sergeant, he had no doubt, but it would be easier if Xander could pick up enough to run with the same story. He lowered his voice; the advantage of clear Oxford diction was that Xander would still be able to hear him even from across the room. “Some of the students who, whose home life is perhaps not always... you know? And, ah, the idea is to give them an accessible adult. Not a teacher, not somebody with obvious authority.”

“Well, yeah, but an English librarian?”

“It’s proving surprisingly effective. I can ask why they behave in particular ways and they’ll explain themselves to me where they might not to you, because I can reasonably be expected not to know. Cultural differences, you see? I ask because I’m uninformed, not because I’m trying to be sarcastic.” _If you’re going to tell a lie, Giles, tell a whopper._ “And because I’m not on the teaching staff, I, I don’t feel obliged to carry tales about school work not done, for example, but I work in the school so I can help if a student...” He put on his best ‘vaguely helpful and approachable’ expression.

“Right. I see.” Plainly he didn’t. Giles wasn’t surprised. Pure, unadulterated flannel.

“So, Sergeant, perhaps you could tell me what exactly happened?”

“Some sort of disturbance...”

“At the mall, yes, you said. And Xander was involved how?”

“I wasn’t,” said Xander sullenly.

The sergeant shrugged. “As far as we can tell, sir, there was some sort of gang fight in the mall. We know Xander wasn’t involved because we have a witness to when he went in before we had managed to close the place off. There was some unpleasantness.”

“Unpleasantness?” enquired Giles blandly, with one eye on Xander.

The sergeant turned slightly away. “Some sort of attack,” he said quietly. “There was... there was rather a lot of blood.”

“I see. So, excuse me, sergeant, but I’m not quite clear on why Xander is being held at all.”

“We brought back three or four youngsters just for the sake of witness statements; all the others have been collected by their parents.”

“It was the library group,” said Xander desperately. “We were all just hanging, Mr Giles, we weren’t doing anything.”

“Let me guess,” murmured Giles. “Willow Rosenberg? Buffy Summers? Maybe Daniel Osbourne?”

“Your group?”

He nodded. “Not troublemakers, sergeant. Willow and Daniel are excellent students.”

“The Summers girl has a reputation...”

“And like most reputations, it’s grown in the telling. She’s a little wild, but not unmanageable.” His voice dropped again. “No father at home. Perhaps short on steadying influences. In any event, if as you say, you were only after witness statements, her own behaviour is hardly relevant, surely?”

“Well, no. But anyway, we called the parents and somebody came to collect the girls and the Osbourne boy, but like I say, we couldn’t raise anybody to come for Xander.”

“Well, then, if you’ve finished with him I shall take him home. I expect he’s a long way past his curfew; I’ll see that he doesn’t get into trouble because you’ve been holding him here, shall I? And I’m sure there won’t be any trouble over him having been questioned without an adult representative present.”

That was a little sharp and Sergeant Bishop nodded and agreed, and wondered afterwards quite how it had become his fault, and watched the two walk across towards the Englishman’s car, stopping to talk on the way. He was glad that somebody else was dealing with the brat: Xander Harris had grown steadily more churlish as the hours had passed, complaining about their refusal to let him go, sulking when they had explained that nobody was answering the phone at his parents’ house, unwilling to give another name of anybody who might come for him, and eventually and reluctantly naming the school librarian. Mr Giles was welcome to him, in the sergeant’s opinion. Nobody else would want him.

*** * * * ***

“So what actually did happen, Xander?”

“Vamps in the mall.”

That was surprisingly concise, for Xander. “Well, yes, I rather assumed as much.”

Xander condescended to elucidate. “The security man saw us go in at the Lincoln Street entrance; two minutes later the other guy was on the radio saying there was something happening right up the other end outside the coffee shop. So that obviously couldn’t be us, we couldn’t have done it in the time.”

Right. Except that Buffy could, and plainly had.

“Buff basically herded them down towards us, we dusted some of ’em, but they split up and the security guy at the far end saw them bolting. He came in and found the victim, rang the cops and then we were all picked up as witnesses.”

“What did you say?”

Xander shrugged. “Saw nothing, heard nothing except a fight, didn’t want to get involved. They can’t prove otherwise.”

Giles nodded. “Good enough.”

“Night then.”

“I – what? Don’t be silly, Xander, I’ll, I’ll run you home.”

“No need, I can walk from here.”

“With a gang of angry vampires who know you, somewhere about the town? I think not. Get in the car.”

“Honestly, I can...”

“Xander, get in the _car_. Apart, apart from the sheer idiocy of walking alone in Sunnydale after dark, we are still within view of the police station, and I have no doubt that Sergeant Bishop is watching to see if I actually am taking responsibility for you.”

Xander ducked his head nervously; Giles wondered vaguely why. “Yeah, I’m sorry ’bout that. I – there wasn’t anybody else.”

“No, well. Get in. If your parents aren’t home...”

“They are,” said Xander bitterly. “Least, they were when I came out tonight. Drinking, fighting.”

Not knowing where their son was, not answering the phone.

“Do, do you want to go home, or would you rather come to mine?” It was only polite to make it Xander's choice, but he would certainly prefer the flat.

“Home. Please.”

The ‘please’ was tacked on as an afterthought and the decision was unexpected. But...

“Xander, is, is something wrong?”

Head shake.

“You seem, you seem a little...” And now he came to think of it, he hadn’t seen Xander to speak to for ten days or so; he hadn’t been at any of the library sessions, he hadn’t caught Giles’ eye when passing him in the school corridors. Giles had asked Willow once, and got a vague response about Xander being in detention for failing to hand in work; he had tutted and let it drop as none of his business.

“Is everything all right at home?” Damn stupid question, but it was only to give Xander a starting point if he wanted to talk.

“Fine.”

Well, if the boy didn’t want to talk, he didn’t. Giles couldn’t make him, and he probably wouldn’t be Xander's first choice of confidant anyway. By the time he drew the car into the kerb at the Harris house, though, he was ready to box Xander's ears; he would never have thought that he could miss Xander's constant chatter, but the awkward silence was worse. He had tried to instigate a conversation half a dozen times, on various topics; Xander had given him short answers, not even as much as was required by courtesy, and had offered nothing himself. He seemed shrunken, somehow; diminished, and if Giles wasn’t mistaken, he was actually leaning away, towards the side of the car. If he was so unwilling to be rescued by Giles, he could damn well rescue himself another time.

“Thank you.” That was his first unprompted sentence since he had fastened his seatbelt. “For... for coming to get me, and the lift, and everything. I’ll... I... Thanks.”

“I’ll come and speak to your parents.”

“No! Really, there’s no need. They probably haven’t even noticed I’m not there.”  

He had some sympathy for that but it couldn’t be allowed to pass. “I’m afraid that Sergeant Bishop may, may follow up on you. If he calls them and tells them I’ve taken you home, but I haven’t spoken to them...”

“All right! Whatever! God, can this _get_ any worse?”

Giles rather thought he wasn’t supposed to have heard that last remark, so he let it pass, following Xander to the front door, which was thrown open as they approached.

“And where the hell have you been? What time do you call this?” It was bellowed into Xander's face; he flinched visibly. Giles, however annoyed he was with Xander, found himself even more annoyed by that.

“Mr Harris? My name is Rupert Giles; the police asked me to collect Xander and bring him home. You’ll be glad to know he’s quite unhurt.” That was acid.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the school librarian. The police called me when they couldn’t get an answer from you.”

The man turned on Xander. “And what the fuck have you been doing that the police picked you up?”

“Nothing!” yelped Xander, shrinking back; Giles’ temper shortened even further.

“Mr Harris, there was an incident in the mall and Xander was required as a witness, that’s all. There’s no suggestion that he has been doing anything he shouldn’t; he would have been home hours ago if the police had been able to contact you.”

“You been hanging around with that Rosenberg bitch? I’m telling you, if you’ve been stealing again...” The door was slammed in Giles’ face; he heard a sullen denial from Xander as the couple moved away into the house.

“Well, thank you so much for your help, Mr Giles, and goodnight,” he muttered to himself, heading back towards his car. Instinct made him pause; training had the stake in his hand before the vampire had him in its sights. It was dust before it had quite finished shifting to game face, and Giles was back in his car with the engine already running before something Willow had once said wandered through his mind. He paused, considering. He had pointed out to Xander that there were angry vampires who knew him loose in the town; Xander surely wouldn’t...

Xander would. He knew Xander would. He retrieved his stake, climbed out of the car, and slipped back towards the house.

Ten minutes later, a window opened.

“Xander?” It was a whisper, and the hand on the window frame froze. “Xander, it’s only Giles.” It took a moment for Xander to find him, tucked into the shadow of the wall. “You can’t – damn.” Because Xander was sliding out through the window, dropping down at his feet. “You can’t sleep in the yard.”

“Better than inside,” whispered Xander shortly.

“I’ve just dusted a vampire on the pavement... the sidewalk. You can _not_ sleep outside tonight.”

“I’ll be...”

“No, you _won’t_. Not tonight. Either you go back inside – and you give me your word you’ll stay there – or you come to mine.”

“Giles...”

“ _No_ , Xander. Those are your choices. Inside and promise to stay there or you come home with me.”

“ _There’s a third option...”_

Giles was dropping as the words came, dropping to one knee and twisting and coming up inside the vampire’s grip, stake in hand, and Xander's stake appearing in the leathery throat beside his own. They both ducked back from the explosion of dust.

“Which?”

Xander turned wordlessly back to the window, obviously intending to climb back inside, when they both heard the shout and crash from within, followed by the high peal of Mrs Harris’s hysterical weeping.

“Oh...” And just a beat, and then quietly, “I’ll come.”

 

 


	2. Insufficient Left To Tie A Knot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps Giles has more in common with Xander than either of them thought.

The trip to Giles’ flat was no more comfortable than the trip from the police station had been. Xander was silent and hunched; Giles was working his way through annoyance into straightforward incomprehension. It was _so_ unlike Xander to be subdued that he was beginning to worry; something was plainly amiss and Xander showed no signs at all of being willing to tell him.

The only thing Xander said unprompted was, “I’m not a thief.”

Giles glanced sideways at him. “I know that.”

“I – he – what he said... I was, I dunno, four? Five? They took me to the mall for something. I picked up a toy car in one of the stores and put it in my pocket. I don’t... I didn’t think it was stealing. I just thought, it was a little red car and I liked it, I wanted to take it home.”

“I, I think a lot of young children have probably done something similar.”

“Yeah, well... every time I go near the mall, he says... I wouldn’t, I don’t want you to think...” He trailed off.

“How many times have you been to get pizza for the research nights?”

“Huh? I dunno. Loads.”

“I’m not completely out of the loop, Xander. I do have a fair idea of what pizza costs, and doughnuts. I’m perfectly well aware that you have _always_ brought me back the change. I, I wouldn’t leave you with the books and the weapons – some of them are valuable – if, if I had any doubts about your honesty.” He hesitated, not wanting to make more of the matter than Xander already had; Xander didn’t answer him, and oddly, seemed to be even more tense than before.

In the flat, he dropped his jacket on the end of the couch and rubbed his face. Midnight again, a working day tomorrow, and not a damn thing done with the evening. “Are you hungry?” Stupid question. Xander was a teenager, and he had spent several hours at the police station; it was doubtful that they had fed him.

“No. Thank you.”

It would have been more convincing if Xander's stomach hadn’t picked that precise moment to announce, disconcertingly loudly, that he was lying. Giles, caught between irritation that Xander _would_ lie to him – and about food? Xander? Who had never yet been known to refuse anything edible? – and an increasing sense of disturbance that there was something badly wrong, managed a snort of amusement.

“Not one of your more credible statements. Come on, let’s see what’s in the fridge. I’m bloody starving, I can tell you. Can, can you get the rolls over there, and wash a couple of those tomatoes? We can manage chicken salad sandwiches and if I don’t get tea more or less at once I won’t be held responsible for the consequences. There’s some cheese as well if, if you’d rather have that, and orange juice. If that carton’s nearly empty, there’s another one in the cupboard above.” He kept up a stream of meaningless conversation, leaving spaces into which Xander failed to put a word, until at last they could sit down and eat. Then he let the silence stretch until even Xander, in whatever peculiar frame of mind he was currently occupying, couldn’t bear it.

“I don’t know how you can eat those.”

Giles glanced down at the jar of jalapeños in front of him and picked out his fifth, crunching it between his teeth. “I keep meaning to take a jar to the library, so that I can have them with my pizza. I don’t think anybody but me likes them, so we never order them. Do you want another sandwich?”

Xander looked away and Giles laughed. “Go on, you can finish the chicken. Bloody hollow legs you’ve got; I was the same at your age. I can remember my mother saying that she’d rather feed me for a week than a fortnight.” For a moment he thought that Xander would refuse, so he turned away, pouring himself more tea, as if he didn’t care one way or the other what Xander did, and hiding a smile when Xander made, and ate, another sandwich.

“Thank you,” said Xander, awkwardly, as they cleared up; whatever bug was bothering him plainly didn’t allow him to be overtly rude, however much he wanted not to talk to Giles. “I – things got awkward today. I shoulda kept some of my lunch back, but... I wasn’t expecting things to go that way.”

It took Giles a moment to make sense of that; then he swung round on Xander, who shrank back. “Are you telling me that you hadn’t eaten since lunchtime? You, you went on patrol with Buffy on an empty stomach? That is... Xander, that’s not intelligent. You know it’s not.”

Xander shrugged, the sullen look sliding over his face again. “Yeah well, you heard how it was at home. Been like that since... I went home after school, meant to eat, but...”

“Well, yes, but... Look, I know I say you, you eat too much junk food, but even junk food would be better than nothing if you knew you were going on patrol. Why didn’t you...”

“Because I’m... My... my dad is... I’m short on funds, O.K.?”

The silence hung on them for a second while Giles tried to think of a tactful way to answer that – because it had to be answered. It was _not_ safe for the boy to go out chasing vampires on an empty stomach. “Yes, I remember _that_ from when I was your age too. Pretty much constant state, as I recall, outrunning the allowance. But look...” There was no help for it, tactful or not. It couldn’t be allowed to continue. He crossed to his jacket and picked out his wallet. _Keep it as light as you can, Giles,_ he thought, folding three notes together. “Put that behind the unconvincing false ID which I have no doubt you possess and call it your emergency fund. It’s, it’s to feed you when you need it, any of you, not for anything else, and you tell me when you need it topped up again, all right? I’ll worry about you a lot less if I know that you’re not going to pass out from hunger midway through a staking.”

Xander made no attempt to take the money from him. “You don’t need...”

He opened his mouth to snap that he _did_ need, and something – he was a Watcher: _something_ which he had seen – told him not to. “Please? I would be easier in my mind.”

Xander looked away. “You know it’s not a good idea, Giles. I’ll only blow it on soda and candy.”

“Nonsense, of course you won’t, you’re more reliable than that. It’s for an emergency, that’s all. I’m sure I can trust you to be sensible about it.”

Oh, good grief, somehow that appeared to be exactly the wrong thing to say, because Xander's mouth was dropping open, his face was twisting and he was bolting for the door, and only years of training had Giles responding fast enough to catch him, grip his shoulders from behind and snarl, “In the name of heaven, Xander, _what is the matter with you_?”

The response raised the hairs on the back of his neck; it was a strangled keening sound accompanied by Xander folding at the waist and knees, and Giles recognised it. He knew the sound: he had made it himself, in his father’s study; it was the sound of someone who had reached absolutely the end of his rope, and who found himself with insufficient left to tie a knot.

The flashback was instantaneous and disturbingly complete: instead of the fabric of Xander's shirt and feel of the boy’s shoulders under his hand, he could feel the smooth paintwork of the window frame; instead of the door in front of them he could see the green lawn of an English garden. He could feel the weight of his leather jacket, and the ache in his shoulder which came from having carried a rucksack and his guitar case over the three miles from the railway station to his parents’ house.

He had gone home; he had been able to think of nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, so he had gone, believing with all but a tiny part of his mind that when he got there he would be turned away. He hadn’t dared to go round the side of the house to the kitchen door, hadn’t believed that he still had the right to walk in unannounced. He had rung the doorbell – and his father had answered it. And then – Giles had been unable to find anything to say. They had stood on the doorstep simply looking at each other until his father had stepped back to let him in, wordless even in daylight, the invitation never spoken for fear of what precisely one might be inviting. They had gone, still silent, to the study, and Giles had somehow found the first few words which unlocked the whole dreadful mess of Eyghon, and Ethan, and Randall. Randall who was dead.

His father hadn’t spoken, had simply let him talk, and in exchange he had given the facts, with no attempt to gloss them, or to make his own share look anything other than the moral disaster that it was. He had stood at the window, his back to the room, and talked, his voice harsh and his words uncompromising. He, Rupert Giles, had wilfully and knowingly done this and this, and the consequences had been this and this. And Randall was dead. They had killed him. When he said it for the second time, he had felt – he didn’t know what, but the ball of it blocked his chest, he couldn’t squeeze any more words out past it, couldn’t even _breathe_ around it, and he had made that same sound that Xander was making, and he too had loosened at knee and hip, folding against the window and sliding down to the floor.

His father, that remote, austere, dignified, undemonstrative man, had caught him, had knelt on the floor with him, had held him while he choked and hiccupped and sobbed his desolation and guilt. Had kissed him. He didn’t remember ever being kissed by his father before: men of his father’s generation didn’t do that. Had waited, simply embracing him, until he was silent. It took a long time. And then his father had helped him up, directed him to a chair, poured him a large brandy, and said simply, “Now let’s think about what we’re going to do.”

In all the time that followed, in the humiliating dealings with the Council of Watchers, in the cold hours of the night in which Giles had to come to terms with what he had willingly done and what he had willingly become, his comfort had been that unrepeated embrace, and that word ‘we’. He had no idea of what had brought Xander to this point, but he could surely give Xander what he himself had been given.

It could have been no more than a second or two; his arm slid across Xander's chest, pulling the boy back upright and turning him towards Giles. He wondered for another second if Xander would accept whatever comfort Giles had to offer – Giles, after all, was _not_ his father – but he hadn’t thought that Xander was much younger than Giles had been. Giles had most decidedly been a grown man, if a young one; Xander was barely balanced between youth and adulthood, and in a crisis might still fall either forward or back. He pushed against Giles only once, and then when Giles didn’t let go, he gave way, his forehead against Giles’ shoulder, one arm coming up around Giles’ neck and the other hand clutching his shirtfront, and Giles found himself holding not a young man, but merely a wretchedly miserable child.


	3. The Apocalypse of Tweed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles and Xander make it all the way to an agreement and an amnesty.

Giles simply stood, for perhaps half a minute, one hand in Xander's hair, and the other arm wrapped around his ribs, but Xander showed no sign of recovering, and indeed, the wrenching, painful sobs were increasing. British reserve wasn’t going to cut it here; Californian touchy-feeliness would have to be attempted. If his father could do it, he could too.

“Come. Come over here, Xander, come on. This way.” He manoeuvred them both to the couch, without ever letting go, and sat down, drawing Xander with him. The boy tried to pull away but Giles held tight, tugging Xander down and pushing and pulling at him, until the gangly body was half in his lap and half along the cushions. Then he tucked Xander's head under his own chin, tightened his grip, and waited.

Xander was trying, desperately, to control himself; he was snatching for breath and attempting speech but Giles could make nothing of it.

“Stop that,” he said authoritatively, to get Xander’s attention, and then gentled. “Don’t try to talk, you’ll give yourself hiccups. Just... just hang onto me. Let it happen, and you’ll feel better presently. I, I,” what was that ridiculous phrase the children used? “I’ve got your back. It’s all right. Just let it happen. Let it come.” On and on, soft reassuring nonsense, and precisely when ‘I’ve got your back’ mutated into ‘I’ve got you,’ neither of them could have said.

Eventually, though, Xander calmed; he made an attempt to pull away from Giles, and Giles allowed him to sit up but not to move otherwise, producing a handkerchief and putting it in Xander's hand. “Dry your face and blow your nose.” His hand slid from Xander's back to his bare arm and he frowned: “You’re cold.” He reached behind him and snagged his jacket, looping it around Xander's shoulders and then drawing the boy back down against his chest, with surprisingly little resistance. “There. Xander Harris in tweed. If, if that’s not the sign of an impending apocalypse, I don’t know what is.”

It got a weak smile; Xander, even mopped up, was a mess. His eyes and nose were swollen, his face blotchy, his hair tangled. He looked – different somehow; real, Giles thought vaguely, in a way he hadn’t been before. Xander Harris wrapped in his jacket and resting against his chest had an existence of his own; previously he had been Buffy’s friend, or – his conscience twinged a little – the errand boy. The extra. Now he was real, and it was plain that he was Giles’ responsibility, even if only by default.

“Ready to tell me about it?” 

Xander shook his head a little. “I – there’s nothing to tell?”

“Supremely unconvincing. Try again.” He was careful not to allow his voice to show any annoyance.

“It was just – just a bad day.”

“Slightly better but not much. A bad day might make you miserable but not to that extent. Tell me what’s the matter and we’ll see what we can do to make things better.”

Xander's face crumpled again and Giles quite instinctively rocked him a little.

“I don’t _understand_!”

“That makes two of us. What do you not understand?”

“Why are you... How can you...”

Giles waited, correctly deducing that these were not existential questions, but something more specific.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Everything! Coming to the police station, and making me supper, and, and giving me money and letting me... and...” He failed to find any reasonably dignified description of ‘letting me howl on your shoulder like a baby’ and gave up.

“I went to the police station because they rang me up and asked to come and fetch you,” said Giles reasonably. “Supper – well, we were both hungry. The money thing is that I genuinely don’t want you putting yourself in danger by patrolling on an empty stomach. The rest happened because you’re unhappy and I don’t know why, and you’re about to tell me so that we can see if anything can be done about it.”

“I – if I had promised to stay inside at home, would you...”

“Would I what?”

“Have believed me.” He almost couldn’t hear it, it was so quiet.

“If you had given me your word to stay in? Yes, of course.”

It earned him, to his complete bewilderment, another three minutes of Xander weeping helplessly into his shirt. Whatever he had expected when he answered the original call from the police, he hadn’t expected it to be so damp. “Come on, that’s enough now. If, if you soak tweed it shrinks and smells horribly like a wet dog; you won’t like it.” He retrieved his handkerchief from Xander's claw grip, found a dryish corner, and wiped the boy’s face.

“Now. No more prevarication; you are going to tell me what the matter is.”

“Bad day,” said Xander, with a hiccup, but with a little more conviction than before.

“Don’t lie to me.” That came slightly more sharply than he intended, and he was sorry when Xander recoiled. “All right, all right. I’ll buy ‘bad day’. But I want details. What part of the day was bad other than the bits I already know about?” He would start with that; he was conscious that if Xander couldn’t be persuaded to tell him willingly, he had no further resources.

Xander's mouth twisted. “Going home after school.”

“Mm. Bad in any unfamiliar manner?” He knew he must step delicately here. Xander's home life... he wondered briefly if it would be _very_ wrong to catch Xander's father outside the house and hit him, just once or twice. Possibly not helpful, but satisfying. He was aware, though, of the need to balance his duty as a responsible adult, which might land Xander in care, with his duty as a Watcher, to keep Buffy and himself, and by extension, her friends, out of the public eye, and also with the responsibility he was just beginning to recognise, to provide Xander with some degree of personal support.

“Suppose not.”

“All right. What about patrol?”

“Was O.K. until we got picked up. After that it sucked.”

“Mm.” He was trying to formulate another question when Xander added anxiously, “I’m really sorry, Giles, I couldn’t think of anybody else... See, they were still trying to raise my parents when the others got picked up, so I couldn’t even ask... and I don’t know the Osbournes anyway, and Buffy’s mom was mad at her and wouldn’t have been any less mad if she’d had to come back later for me, and Willow’s dad...”

“Yes. So you thought of me. Nothing wrong with that, you knew I would come for you.”

Even with the child half on his lap, he nearly missed it: the tiny shiver.

“You, you didn’t? Xander... why on earth would you think I wouldn’t come?” He was genuinely startled; he had become so accustomed to being the go-to bank and taxi driver for all the children that even his complaints about it were mostly for form’s sake.

Xander shrank visibly inside Giles’ jacket. “You were mad.”

Well, one of them certainly was, and it seemed perfectly likely that it was Giles. Insanity was as likely an explanation as anything else... He backtracked mentally, and translated from American to English. “I wasn’t angry. Why did you think I was angry?”

Xander was trying to pull away; it seemed important to keep him where he was. “After the spell. You sent me away.”

_‘Just go. Get out of my sight.’_

Oh dear Lord. “Xander, that was ten days ago!”

“You told me to go. You were mad at me.”

“I was bloody livid,” he agreed. “But it was... I’m not still, and anyway, even if I had been...” He stopped, shaking his head, struggling to make sense of this. “Even allowing for that, why would you think that I wouldn’t come if you were genuinely in trouble? Why on _earth_ would you think... no, never mind that.” Because when he considered it, what could be more reasonable? He knew that in the aftermath of the love spell, Xander had presented himself to Miss Calendar and apologised abjectly; she had told Giles so herself, laughing ruefully. He had not been near Giles, who had...

Who had not bothered to ask why not, to wonder why Jenny warranted an apology and he did not. Who had not _bothered_ to follow up why Xander was absenting himself from the library. Who had not been sufficiently interested to explain to Xander – if he didn’t already know – _why_ what he had done was so unacceptable. He had assumed that Xander didn’t want to see him, not that he didn’t dare. When Giles actually _thought_ about it – when he _thought_ about Xander rather than simply ignoring him – he did actually know enough to understand why Xander had behaved the way he did.

Xander had called him tonight because he quite literally had nobody else to call. Giles, who knew a great deal on his own account about loneliness and isolation, still found that terrifying. Nobody, he thought, who was not yet legally old enough to be expected to look after himself, should at the same time be so badly provided with protectors. The line he had used to Sergeant Bishop, about being an accessible adult, had more truth in it than he had acknowledged – and as Xander's accessible adult, he was a dismal failure.

The boy of seventeen was still being accused of the petty sins of the five year old; in the world that he knew, forgiveness came... probably only from Willow. He genuinely didn’t _know_ that it could be had by asking for it. He had apologised to Jenny Calendar because... probably because Willow would have told him he had to – and because Jenny’s opinion didn’t actually matter to him very much.

He hadn’t apologised to Giles because there was no point in it, it wasn’t – as far as he knew – the route to forgiveness and reconciliation. The only adult who showed him any kindness (and Giles winced mentally, knowing that his kindness had been impersonal and remote, with as much emotional involvement as he gave to patting a dog in the street) had withdrawn it. No wonder he had fallen apart: Giles had criticised his behaviour and told him to go; all he could offer Giles as an act of contrition was obedience, and Giles hadn’t even had the grace to notice it.

No wonder, either, that his confusion had been beyond the ability of a teenager to process:  everything tonight which had upset Xander had involved some mention of trust: trusting him with money or valuable books, trusting him to be responsible about an emergency fund, trusting his word if he had said he would stay inside. Xander was not expecting that Giles would ever trust him again, and Giles had missed this fact and simply carried on as if nothing had happened.

“Right. Let’s talk about the spell. I should have done this ten days ago but let’s talk about it and be done with it.”

Xander was trying to pull away again; Giles held on. Physical contact appeared to be important to the boy; Giles had noticed before that he touched other people often, patting a shoulder or hugging them. If it took contact to have his attention, Giles would hold him.

“I’m not saying I wasn’t angry; I was bloody furious. That was... well, you tell me.”

Xander, thwarted in his desire to escape, turned his face away. “I shouldn’t have...”

“No, you damn well shouldn’t. What you did to Amy was blackmail, pure and simple, done with the intention of being viciously cruel to Cordelia. It was spiteful and vindictive and plain _stupid_ ,and you knew it was wrong from the beginning, didn’t you?” Xander was trembling again. “Why did I send you away?”

“You were mad...”

“And you were in danger. You were safer away from the girls; you saw what happened when they found you. Oz dotted you one, and you’ll get no sympathy from me for it: you had it coming. You were safer away from me, too: I was fighting an almost overpowering desire to flip you over my knee and wallop your backside until you howled. I don’t think you could convince me even now that you didn’t deserve it.” And that might, he acknowledged to himself ruefully, have been the better option: a condign, painful and above all _immediate_ punishment, followed by an express assurance of forgiveness. “I was hopping mad with you, disappointed and ashamed of you.” Xander, mortified, was beginning to struggle hard now, and Giles landed the killer blow. “I was also conscious that what you had done was almost exactly the sort of thing I did when I was only a few years older than you are now. I was exasperated not only with you but with myself, because in my day I have been just as selfish and cruel as you. A damn sight worse, actually. I’m telling you, Xander: that sort of magic never, _never_ ends well. I was angry because I could see you making precisely the mistakes I did, and you’re capable of a lot better. I know you are.”

Xander stilled, but he kept his face turned away.

“I never meant to turn you away for good, and I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear to you. I should have come looking for you as soon as I had calmed down.” He set his fingers gently to Xander's jaw, turning the boy’s face back towards him. “No matter how angry I am, you can always come back.”

Everybody needed somewhere to go back to. He scowled at Xander.

“I expect there will be times I’m cross with you. You’re seventeen, you’ll be irritating, it goes with the territory. I’m old and bad-tempered, that goes with the territory too. I’ll probably shout at you, but you won't die of it, and I’ll help fix whatever ghastly thing you’ve done. I’ll get over whatever it is much faster if you can show me that you know _why_ I’m angry and that you won’t do it again. Once you’ve done that, leave me alone for twenty-four hours and then approach me slowly and carefully, holding out a box of doughnuts. If I still show my teeth, back away quietly and try again a day later.” He smiled a little at Xander's bewilderment. “Leave the doughnuts. Eventually I’ll get over whatever your latest idiocy has been. And I will always, always, _always_ ,” punctuating it with little shakes to Xander's shoulders, “turn out to post your bail or give you an alibi or whatever it is. Even if I’m still in the pre-doughnut shouting-at-you phase. Is that clear?”

Almost certainly not, if Xander's stunned expression were anything to go by.

“But...” he said presently.

“Yes?”

“I screwed up.”

“You did. Hugely. I believe the phrase I should use here is ‘so deal’.”

Xander considered that carefully and in silence. Presently he made a tiny abortive movement towards Giles, who identified it, and put a hand on his shoulder to pull him back down against Giles’ chest. Xander needed the hug and Giles remembered very clearly how that went. Eventually Xander sighed.

“’Kay. If... when I screw up I gotta come and tell you. You’ll yell, you’ll help me fix it, I gotta grovel, you may yell some more, I should lay low and wait for it to be over, possibly with some secondary grovelling. But when I need you to help me... you will?”

“Remind me to explain to you about transitive and intransitive verbs.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t lay, Xander, you’re not a chicken. You lie low. Otherwise, yes, I think you’ve got the idea. Oh good Lord, you can’t possibly cry any more, I’ll drown. Stop it at once. Hush. Listen, I’ll give you a yelling amnesty: I am simply too tired to yell at you tonight. If you’ve done anything which I would normally yell about, tell me now and I’ll keep it down to a small amount of sneering and sarcasm, and we’ll carry a clean slate over to the morning. What else have you done of which I’m going to disapprove?”

Xander grinned, rather damply. “Don’t reckon you’ll rate my literature homework. Otherwise, I’m good.” He looked doubtful. “At least, I think I am.”

“That’ll do,” said Giles wearily. “Is, is there anything else you want to tell me? Ask me?”

“Just...” Xander hesitated, and then half throttled him with a hug. “Just, thanks, you know?”

He rather thought he did know.

 


	4. Do As I Say, Not As I Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You Stole a What?

The morning was awkward. Xander seemed to rocket between deep discomfiture and total hero worship; Giles, who had English reserve rather than Californian openness in his character, stuck with the discomfiture. It had worn off a little by the time he drove them both to school; and he had begun to apply his intellect, rather than his emotions, to the state of affairs. Something, he decided, had to be _said_ , spoken aloud, about the revelations of the night before, or the whole situation would become an unendurable embarrassment to them both.

He parked the car and applied the handbrake, and prepared, with only a small sigh of regret, to sacrifice his dignity and reputation.

“I have to say, Xander, I’m not at all impressed by your shoplifting career.” Even without turning his head, he saw Xander's mouth snap shut and a wary expression cross his face. “A toy car? I stole a guitar.”

He made it half way to the library before Xander caught up with him. “A _what_?”

“A guitar.”

“A toy guitar?”

“Certainly not. A full sized one. An Arnold Hoyer six-string acoustic with a rosewood fingerboard, if I recall correctly. Rather a nice one.”

From the corner of his eye he watched Xander consider his height and build.

“Even if I believed you – and I’m not at all sure I do – that’s not a fair comparison. A guitar isn’t shoplifting.”

He allowed himself to look politely puzzled. “In what way is stealing a new guitar not shoplifting?”

“Well, it’s obvious: shoplifting is, is hiding things in your pocket and getting out without anybody noticing.”

“I quite agree.”

“And you can’t do that to something the size of a guitar.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Giles, you _can’t_!”

“I did.”

“Doesn’t count if you got caught.”

“I’m insulted that you would think I might have got caught. I can show you the... Oh, no, actually, I can’t show you the guitar, now I come to think of it, it’s in storage in London.”

“You’ve still _got_ it?”

He managed to look a little ashamed. “The shop I took it from closed many years ago; I couldn’t return it now.” He unlocked the library and Xander followed him across towards the office.

“O.K. Ante up. How did you do it? And if it’s not proper shoplifting... I don’t believe it’s proper shoplifting.”

Giles perched a hip on the desk and reached for his handkerchief and spectacles. “Please bear in mind that if I hear of a spate of losses among Sunnydale’s music shops, I will know that it was you and I, I will grass you up. You’re going to need Oz as an accomplice.”

“Why Oz?”

“Because he already owns a guitar. You will also need Willow, and possibly Buffy, and maybe also Cordelia or – what’s that friend of Oz’s called? Devon. Can Willow burst into tears on demand?”

“Huh?”

“Deidre could, that’s why she was so good at this. You’re all going home together after band practice; as many of you as possible will need to be carrying your instruments. Oz is not with you. Oz is on his own, five minutes ahead of you; he will go into the music shop and start looking at, I don’t know, spare guitar strings or sheet music or something.

“The rest of you all go in together. You’re making quite a lot of noise and two of you – I suggest you and Cordelia – are buying something which requires decisions to be made. Sheet music again, perhaps, for the school band, and you can ask how long it would take to get twenty copies of some particular arrangement, or if the woman at the counter knows what the competition piece for cornet is this year, and would it be possible for you to put up a poster about the band contest in the window of the shop.

“Meanwhile Willow and Buffy and Devon are just looking around, waiting for you. And presently, Devon – Devon is the tall boy, isn’t he? Devon is going to step backwards and trip over Buffy’s clarinet case which she has left on the floor.”

“Buffy doesn’t play the clarinet, Giles.”

He sighed. “Work with me a bit here, Xander. When I did this, it was an amateur rock band, not a school band, so we did it slightly differently. Deidre caught her foot in the strap of Philip’s rucksack. Devon is going to fall over, all right? He is going to fall over, very loudly and embarrassingly, into the drum kit on the display stand.”

Xander started to laugh. “O.K. Then what?”

“You and Cordelia and Buffy and Willow will rush to pick him up, and to pick up the drum kit, and to apologise to the shop owner, and to make sure there’s no damage. You will get in each other’s way and drop things and accuse each other of carelessness. If Willow can manage embarrassed tears at this point, that would be good. It will take you ten minutes to sort out the drum kit, to apologise again – Cordelia can probably manage a nice line in ticking Devon off for clumsiness and Buffy for leaving her clarinet case on the floor where people can trip over it. Then you all leave.”

“Um, yeah, but...”

“Yes?”

“But how does that help with shoplifting a guitar?”

“Ah. While you were all faffing around with drum kits, occupying the staff, that quiet boy with the multicoloured hair – he might want to lose that, it’s a bit too conspicuous – popped a guitar from the display on the other side of the shop into the guitar case which he had been carrying, and walked calmly out.”

Xander's eyes grew big and round. “You actually did that?”

“I actually did. It was very wrong of me and you are _not_ to take it as an example. Unless, that is, you find somewhere selling Lowden guitars; I would like one of those. That is, I mean, no, you are not to shoplift guitars or indeed anything else.”

“And you didn’t get caught?”

“We did it twice in different shops; we had enough sense to quit while we were ahead.”

“How old were you?”

Giles shrugged. “Twenty? Twenty-one? Quite old enough to know better. I was neither moral nor reliable at that age.” He hesitated on the verge of saying ‘so see, I do know about making bad choices’ and decided against. Xander could make that jump on his own.

“But you grew out of it.”

“I did. Now, you need to be getting along to class, and I would like a word with Miss Calendar before I start for the day, so hop it.”

“Awwww, gonna walk her to class and carry her books?”

“Given half a chance, yes, and you might like to remember that I have the authority to put you in detention for impertinence. There are all of yesterday’s books to be re-shelved, you know.”

He got Xander's flashing smile. “I’m gone, Giles, I’m outta here.”

The message was delivered to Xander during his last class of the day. “Harris? Mr Giles wants to see you in the library before you leave.”

Giles was surrounded by books and paper and looked harassed, but he stopped what he was doing when Xander came in. “Ah. Yes. Now. Um... Three things, Xander. First of all, you forgot this.” It was a roll of bills. “Emergency fund. Tell me when you need more. Keep it...”

“Behind my unconvincing fake ID. Yeah. Thanks.” Xander swallowed hard, but he accepted the money and tucked it safely away.

“Yes, good, good. Um, research party here this evening. If you aren’t here, I shall come looking for you and you’ll be sorry. Is that clear?”

Xander just nodded, but his grin reassured Giles.

“We’ll need supplies.” He held out a second wad of money. “I suppose it had better be pizza again. The girls are coming, and Oz. Please make sure you get some paper napkins this time, and for the love of God, don’t shake up the soda cans, the damn stuff never comes out of the leather bindings on the books.”

“Pizza, soda, check. Doughnuts?”

“I, I suppose so. Willow likes the ones with the peculiar multi-coloured...”

“Hey, Giles, don’t need to tell me what sort of doughnuts Willow likes best.”

“No, I, I suppose not. The other, the other thing is...” He held something out and Xander took it.

“Um, Giles, is this...?”

“It’s, it’s a spare key to my flat. It’s, it’s just in case. You needn’t mention to the girls that you’ve got it, but if you, if you need to use it, then use it.” Giles was conspicuously getting on with his filing and not looking at Xander. He was conscious that his stammer was very acute; he was far from certain that he was dealing rightly with Xander, but as far as he could tell, nobody else was attempting to deal _at all_ , and for the love of God, somebody had to.

“I – thank you.” For once, Xander said nothing more; when Giles looked up, Xander was gazing at the key in his hand and his mouth was trembling. Giles hastily looked away again.

“Giles? What – what’s this mean, on the key ring?” Giles had gone out in his lunch break to have the key cut, and had attached it to the sort of cheap key ring with a plastic tag which opened over a slip of paper. He had written a message, rather than a name or address: Robert Frost, _The Death of the Hired Man_ , lines 122-123.

“You can look it up, later. Research.” He was vaguely embarrassed by it now, and half hoped that Xander would forget. “Go on, then, get along. I’ll see you this evening.”

He heard them all come in; he was in the stacks, and Xander called to him.

“Giles? Left your change on your desk.”

He looked around the end of the shelving. “Thank you, Xander.”

“Xander?” That was Buffy. “What’s on this pizza?”

“Pepperoni, mushrooms, jalapeños.”

“But nobody likes jalapeños.”

“Giles does.”

“Well, nobody else does.”

“Buff, it’s one pizza. Giles is paying for all of them, he can be allowed one which _he_ likes. Pick ’em off your share if you don’t like ’em, or eat the Hawaiian. And there are three jelly doughnuts and one of those is for Giles too. He likes them best. I got a cinnamon one for you and one with sprinkles for Willow.” He bounded up the steps and came face to face with Giles, arms full of books. “Research, Giles. Where do I begin?”

“You could, you could take these down for me.”

“’Kay, leave them there and I’ll do just that, but I’ve got something to track down first. American poets, Giles? Where are they?”

“I, I, it doesn’t matter, Xander, it...”

“No, I wanna know. I’m curious.”

He yielded. “Shelves 471 and 472. That way.” He found himself listening as Xander bounced off to look; he heard the pause as he located a book and the flick-flick of pages, followed by silence. It had been a stupid idea, but the quotation had seemed so apposite... It was sentimental and Xander would hate it.

_“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  
They have to take you in.”_

A moment later, Xander came back rather more slowly, looked at him, hesitated – and then hugged him swiftly, before picking up the books and thundering down the stairs, his voice raised to demand a share of the pizza.

Giles was smiling as he followed.


End file.
